Lucky Magazine to be spun off in joint venture with BeachMint

What will happen to Lucky magazine? That's been the question hanging on the lips of the fashion and media industries as the glossy's ad pages have continued to plummet over the past few years. (The magazine sold just 90 pages for the all-important September issue --Vogue, by comparison, brought in 631.) Many have speculated that the magazine would go digital-only or fold entirely.

Neither is correct: Rather, Condé Nast announced Monday that Lucky, including its entire editorial and business teams, is being spun off into a new joint venture with (reportedly troubled) e-commerce company BeachMint. The Lucky Group will be a "wholly independent entity" backed by Conde Nast (and presumably BeachMint's investors, which include Goldman Sachs and NEA) and is set to launch early next year.

BeachMint's Josh Berman will serve as CEO of the new Group, Lucky Editor in Chief Eva Chen will be its Chief Creative Officer and Lucky General Manager and Senior Vice President Gillian Gorman Round will be its president. Conde Nast Artistic Director Anna Wintour will serve as an advisor. A source tell us The Lucky Group will be housed in a separate building from the rest of Conde, which is currently migrating to 1 World Trade Center.

Although Lucky is now a separate company, it will continue to print 10 issues a year, a second source tells us. And Lucky's current print team will continue to work on that product. Its online editorial team will transition to create editorial around The Lucky Group's e-commerce initiatives.

And what will those e-commerce initiatives look like? It's not yet clear. Perhaps we can expect something resembling the e-commerce sites – Net-a-Porter, Mr. Porter, The Editorialist, etc. – that so well combine content and commerce already. Either way, it's clear Lucky will no longer be an editorial entity in the traditional sense, but a shopping destination in its own right.

"I'm excited to bring our editorial expertise and voice to a new platform that will inspire Lucky Girls everywhere to express their personal style and, of course, shop!" Eva Chen said in a statement.